Three Little Words (7 page)

Years later, when I saw the film
Oliver
, I wondered if anyone knew that, like those British boys in the orphanage, American children beg for food in some foster homes. At the Mosses’, several of the older boys were so hungry that they stole snacks at night. When Mrs. Moss discovered their crime, she locked the boys in their bedroom, which had a sliding glass door that opened into the indoor dining room.

“Wave your sandwiches at them,” Mrs. Moss coaxed us to tease them.

For the next several meals they had to watch us eat. Eventually, she locked them in their room at night with an alarm that sounded if anyone tried to escape, and they were given a bucket to use as a toilet.

I hated mystery casseroles. When Mrs. Moss spooned out a fishy mixture, I pleaded as cutely as possible, “May I pretty please have a bowl of cereal instead?”

“Well, okay,” Mrs. Moss said with a sly grin. She poured a meager portion of Lucky Charms into a plastic bowl, and then she rummaged in the refrigerator for a gallon of milk. It poured thickly, with some chunks plopping into the bowl, and I carried it outside to the little plastic table where we kids usually ate our meals. It sloshed on the table as I set it down.

Luke said longingly, “I wish I had some.”

The first swallow made me gag. I ran to the hose and rinsed out my mouth. When I came back to the table, Luke was shoveling the cereal in his mouth as fast as he could. “Luke! That’s disgusting!”

“It’s yummy in my tummy!”

Nausea overwhelmed me. I rushed toward the house. As usual, the door was bolted. I banged on it. Mr. Moss came to the door holding his napkin.

“Gotta go!” I blurted. As I rushed toward the bathroom, my stomach lurched. A flume of vomit arched onto the floor.

“You’ve ruined the carpet!” Mrs. Moss screeched. She gripped my hair and pushed my face into my puke. I don’t know what was worse: the taste of the curdled milk, watching Luke eat the sickening concoction, vomiting, being humiliated, smelling my mess up close, or having to clean it up, which I couldn’t do to her satisfaction. Later, as the sour smell lingered, Mrs. Moss reminded everyone that it had been my fault and made me stand in the corner.

The Mosses punished us for anything they could think of. Mrs. Moss kept a bottle of Crystal hot sauce on a turntable with other condiments. If she did not like what someone said, she would announce, “My mother would have made us eat soap—be thankful this is real food.” Then she would make the troublemaker swallow spoonfuls of the hot sauce. If you moaned or spit it out, she would force more down.

I decided I would do whatever was necessary to stay on this woman’s good side. Unfortunately, my brother had neither the good sense nor the self-control to do the same. Luke was so hungry, he would eat almost anything. If Mrs. Moss caught him biting off hunks of soap, eating big globs of toothpaste, or drinking from the shampoo bottle, he would get the hot-sauce punishment. He hated it; but he never learned to avoid it.

“We’re going to have a picnic with some other foster families at the beach!” Mrs. Moss announced one day, sounding unusually jolly. She liberated buckets, shovels, and other sand toys from one of the sheds. “Everyone hurry up and get into your swimsuits.”

As soon as we were ready, we lined up for photos, posing first individually in front of some palms and then as a group—“one big happy family.” Even though I had lived most of my life in and around Tampa, which is only a short drive from many Gulf of Mexico beaches, I had not been to the shore since the trip with Aunt Leanne in South Carolina.

At the beach Mrs. Moss gave Toby and Mitchell, another of the foster boys, an inflatable shark. Almost immediately, Mitchell pulled it out from under Toby and a fight ensued. Mrs. Moss made the boys sit on their towels. I had a turn with the shark, but when everyone quarreled over who was next, Mrs. Moss stowed it away.

Mandy and I headed for the wet sand closer to the water. I began filling a bucket and packing it, then turning it over to make towers of a castle. I showed her how to take a thin stream of sand and make squiggles to decorate the turrets. Just as I was scooping out the moat, Luke rushed past, kicking clouds of sand in his wake. I knew him well enough to anticipate what he was about to do. “Don’t you dare!” I shouted. With one long jump, my brother flattened our castle.

A swell of anger rose from a black, dark space inside me. Luke was the problem all along! If it had not been for him, I would be with my mother! I clenched his arms tightly and shook him. “Don’t you ever touch anything of mine again!”

One of the other foster parents broke us apart. “You’re with Marjorie Moss, right?” The woman marched us back to face her wrath.

Instead of reprimanding us, Mrs. Moss acted concerned. “Look at you two! Why, your faces are red as beets. Let’s get you some cold drinks.” She handed us sodas from her cooler.

“I don’t know where you get your patience,” the other parent said.

“They’ve been separated and …” As she gestured, all her rings glinted in the sun. Then she whispered, “Grandfather … shot …”

The other woman glanced at us as if we were interesting specimens. “I don’t know how you do it.”

“All they need is love and attention,” Mrs. Moss said, “and I have plenty of both to go around.”

My mother’s face followed me like a shadow. I mentally cataloged all the injustices in the Moss household—the vomiting episode, going hungry, the hot-sauce treatments—so I could inform her on my next visit. At the end of June, Mrs. Moss handed Luke and me two of our best outfits from the shed and told us that we were going downtown. I suspected that we would see our mother but that we weren’t being told in case she did not show. As we entered Miles Ferris’s office, Mrs. Moss promised, “If you’re good, we’ll get ice cream afterward.”

During the meeting Luke kept kicking a desk, but I mouthed,
Ice cream.

“Can you bring them for a visit on July fifth?” Mr. Ferris asked. “Or do you need someone to transport?”

“It’s no trouble for me,” Mrs. Moss said deferentially. “And don’t you think it would be wise if I stayed with them?”

“That would be helpful,” the caseworker replied. “How are they adjusting?”

“We’ve had our struggles, but they are settling down.” She lowered her voice. “I just hope this visit from M-O-M doesn’t rile them up.”

“Your concern is a big plus for these children and the department,” he replied.

Mom! Did Mrs. Moss really think I didn’t know such a simple word? I was disappointed that I wouldn’t be seeing Mama that day, but at least she
was
coming. I even forgot about the ice cream, which Mrs. Moss had only offered in front of the worker to make it seem like she was a good foster parent.

There is one awful day with the Mosses that is most vivid in my mind. That afternoon Mr. and Mrs. Moss took several children to an appointment, leaving the rest of us with Melissa, who was either the wife or girlfriend of Ricky, one of Mrs. Moss’s sons. They lived in one of the trailers on the property. Melissa made us sandwiches. After lunch Mandy and I played one of my favorite games—tea party princesses—on the patio.

“Would you care for an icing cake?” I handed Mandy the top of a Tupperware container laden with little stones and leaves as props for my imaginary delicacies.

She took a leaf, then let it flutter away without pretending to taste it. I made refined smacking noises with my lips. “Delicious, don’t you think?”

The roar of an engine interrupted our game. “Wow!” Mitchell shouted as Ricky drove his dirt bike into the field on the other side of the boys’ fence.

“Whoa! Check that out!” shouted Toby. He ran closer to the fence as Ricky splattered through puddles left by a recent thunderstorm. Toby yelped as some of the muddy water splashed him.

Forgetting the gender boundaries, I rushed in position to be splashed next, with Mandy at my heels. As the bike came around, I held up my arms and got drenched. Playing to his audience, the driver angled closer to the fence and did a wheelie during his next pass. We whooped in appreciation.

As I was cheering, someone clutched my arm and jerked me back. “What are you doing on the boys’ side of the yard?” Melissa bellowed.

“W-watching the bike,” I stammered.

“I’m going to tell Marjorie,” she said, “unless you get back on the patio.”

Mandy scurried away, but I lingered long enough to catch another trick.

When Mrs. Moss returned, Melissa told her that we had gone over to the boys’ side and blurted, “Ashley wouldn’t listen to me.”

“You know what that means, girls,” Mrs. Moss said. “Twenty-five laps.”

Mandy and I marched to the front yard and began to run around the long, horseshoe-shaped driveway, across the grassy spot laced with tree roots, then through the spiky weeds that lashed at my bare legs. Melissa had betrayed us! I was so furious that my eyes blurred. After three laps I stumbled; on the fourth, I tripped over a root. When I tried to stand, I couldn’t. “Get up, Ashley!” Mrs. Moss shrieked.

“I can’t! I hurt myself.”

She gripped a chunk of my hair and jerked me toward her. I yelped like a puppy whose paw had been stepped on.

“Uh-oh!” Mandy gasped. “Ashley’s gonna get it now.”

Inside the trailer Mrs. Moss drummed her fingers on the counter as she contemplated my punishment. I was hoping to get sent to a corner, where I could fantasize about a grand Cinderella wedding with Jonathan Rodriquez as my groom. Almost as if she were reading my thoughts, Mrs. Moss said, “Standing in the corner hasn’t taught you any lessons. Let’s see if squatting gets better results.” She pressed me under the kitchen counter. I knew from watching Mrs. Moss punish Heather that I had to hunker down without letting my head touch the top of the counter ledge or my butt or heels rest on the floor. My hands had to be straight at my sides, but I couldn’t put my fingertips on the floor to help me balance. “Ten—no, twenty minutes,” she announced.

My left foot throbbed from the fall, so I leaned my weight on the right. Concentrating on a splash of light on the floor, I bit the inside of my cheek. I had a strong will and tough leg muscles, but in less than five minutes I needed my fingertips to steady myself.

“I saw that!” Mrs. Moss crowed. She pulled a slotted spoon from a crockery pot on the counter and began pummeling my butt. I tried to escape her by crawling farther under the shelf and trying to reassume the position. I bit down even harder on my cheek and felt a rusty taste in my mouth. She kicked me several times to get me out from under the counter and then struck me even harder.

Blood dribbled down my chin. “Please stop!” I pleaded.

She glanced to where Mr. Moss was watching television.

“Go to your room. I don’t want to see you until tomorrow,” she hissed.

I lay on my bunk and moaned. My mouth was bleeding. My ankle throbbed. My legs were scraped from falling on the roots, and my bottom burned. That night, when I was getting ready to take my bath, I noticed the spoon had made a curious imprint: My skin was red where the spoon had smacked flesh, white where there had been holes.

Only a few more days
, I reminded myself. My mother was coming soon to take me home with her and everything would be all right.